I thought I would make a quick thread about today's Microsoft Store Pre E3 Event in Culver City that I attended.
The event was supposed to showcase some indie games, as well as give fans the chance to attend Microsoft's E3 press conference. They were giving away 100 tickets to attend the E3 conference tomorrow. I figured a few hundred people would show up, and I was right. By the time they started drawing tickets I estimated there were about 300-350 people, meaning the odds of winning were about 1 in 3.
My main problem with the event was the fact that while the event inside the store started at 1 PM, the raffle started at 11 AM and more tickets were raffled off every 15 minutes. This meant that those in the raffle were standing in the sun for two hours. Most people, like myself, were there half an hour early. So basically in the middle of summer in Southern California we were standing out in the sun with no shade for 2 and a half hours. They did have some employees that handed out water. Despite wearing sunscreen I did come back majorly sunburned on my neck and arm.
The people around me in line were really cool and I was chatting with them the whole time. Half of our group won the pass the go tomorrow. Unfortunately, I didn't win.
Other things raffled away throughout the day were 3 Xbox One Titanfall Consoles, a free XB1 game of the winners choice, Call of Duty Ghosts Special Edition, Watch Dogs Special Edition, and a Thrustmaster Wheel (I was really jealous of this winner).
Later the big raffle line was moved to another line directly outside the MS store and we entered in shortly. There were two games to play.
The first one was IDARB and was similar to the Rayman Legends Soccer Mini game. Basically it is a 2D game where you have a jump button and an attack button (which steals the ball or throws the ball if you have it). If you tweeted certain things with the proper hash tag to the correct address, it would affect the game itself. People made the screen shrink really small, Rick Astley dance across the screen, a horror face appear out of nowhere, all players turn into a red block, screen mirroring, etc, all from their phone.
The game was actually 8 players (didn't know this was possible on XB1) and is two teams of four. Overall it was a lot of fun due to the chaos of everything. My one complaint is that that the characters jump too high and that whether you tap or hold down the A button, the jump is always the same height. This gives you less control over the player.
The second game was Fru. This one was really creative in terms of how game input can work. There is a single player and a co op mode, with separately designed levels for each. I played the co op mode with one of the game's developers. How the game works is it uses the player's body silhouette to determine whether platforms appear or disappear.
Some platforms need a body over them to appear, some only appear when the body isn't touching them. It is dynamic so you can have pieces of a platform appear by covering just a section of it. While positioning your body you also have to control your character. The co op mode was obviously designed for collaboration as you need two people to get to the end of each level. One player may have to stand still to keep your players alive, while the other walks to another part of the room to get the next platform to appear.
This one really changed my perception of how a game can work and even simple looking tasks can be challenging. I really loved this one. When I asked the developer when it comes out he said "To be honest, probably not until next year". Makes me thing it was delayed. I'm looking forward to it whenever it does come out.
Here is a quick video I took of Fru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r5ympkTpXE
I know some people on here have expressed their dislike for him. However, Major Nelson is a really cool guy. Everyone was following him around wherever he walked and he was always posing for photos and answering any questions people asked him. I was going to ask him to post more on Gaf. Whenever I was about to ask for a photo with him he was always pulled aside by someone else first, but I did get a quick picture of him. Really nice guy though and he was definitely the life of the party. When he left he said he was going to rehearse for tomorrow and that during an upcoming event in the same store Wednesday "There may just be an unannounced game playable too" (referring to something announced at E3 being playable).
Anyways, besides waiting in the sun
I had fun. I have attended E3 in the past so this was nothing too amazing for me, but since they denied my registration this year it was nice to go to another video game event around the same time.
The event was supposed to showcase some indie games, as well as give fans the chance to attend Microsoft's E3 press conference. They were giving away 100 tickets to attend the E3 conference tomorrow. I figured a few hundred people would show up, and I was right. By the time they started drawing tickets I estimated there were about 300-350 people, meaning the odds of winning were about 1 in 3.
My main problem with the event was the fact that while the event inside the store started at 1 PM, the raffle started at 11 AM and more tickets were raffled off every 15 minutes. This meant that those in the raffle were standing in the sun for two hours. Most people, like myself, were there half an hour early. So basically in the middle of summer in Southern California we were standing out in the sun with no shade for 2 and a half hours. They did have some employees that handed out water. Despite wearing sunscreen I did come back majorly sunburned on my neck and arm.
The people around me in line were really cool and I was chatting with them the whole time. Half of our group won the pass the go tomorrow. Unfortunately, I didn't win.
Other things raffled away throughout the day were 3 Xbox One Titanfall Consoles, a free XB1 game of the winners choice, Call of Duty Ghosts Special Edition, Watch Dogs Special Edition, and a Thrustmaster Wheel (I was really jealous of this winner).
Later the big raffle line was moved to another line directly outside the MS store and we entered in shortly. There were two games to play.
The first one was IDARB and was similar to the Rayman Legends Soccer Mini game. Basically it is a 2D game where you have a jump button and an attack button (which steals the ball or throws the ball if you have it). If you tweeted certain things with the proper hash tag to the correct address, it would affect the game itself. People made the screen shrink really small, Rick Astley dance across the screen, a horror face appear out of nowhere, all players turn into a red block, screen mirroring, etc, all from their phone.
The game was actually 8 players (didn't know this was possible on XB1) and is two teams of four. Overall it was a lot of fun due to the chaos of everything. My one complaint is that that the characters jump too high and that whether you tap or hold down the A button, the jump is always the same height. This gives you less control over the player.
The second game was Fru. This one was really creative in terms of how game input can work. There is a single player and a co op mode, with separately designed levels for each. I played the co op mode with one of the game's developers. How the game works is it uses the player's body silhouette to determine whether platforms appear or disappear.
Some platforms need a body over them to appear, some only appear when the body isn't touching them. It is dynamic so you can have pieces of a platform appear by covering just a section of it. While positioning your body you also have to control your character. The co op mode was obviously designed for collaboration as you need two people to get to the end of each level. One player may have to stand still to keep your players alive, while the other walks to another part of the room to get the next platform to appear.
This one really changed my perception of how a game can work and even simple looking tasks can be challenging. I really loved this one. When I asked the developer when it comes out he said "To be honest, probably not until next year". Makes me thing it was delayed. I'm looking forward to it whenever it does come out.
Here is a quick video I took of Fru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r5ympkTpXE
I know some people on here have expressed their dislike for him. However, Major Nelson is a really cool guy. Everyone was following him around wherever he walked and he was always posing for photos and answering any questions people asked him. I was going to ask him to post more on Gaf. Whenever I was about to ask for a photo with him he was always pulled aside by someone else first, but I did get a quick picture of him. Really nice guy though and he was definitely the life of the party. When he left he said he was going to rehearse for tomorrow and that during an upcoming event in the same store Wednesday "There may just be an unannounced game playable too" (referring to something announced at E3 being playable).
Anyways, besides waiting in the sun
and losing
